7 December 2011

UK medical journal The Lancet recently headlined climate change as “the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.” Yet this presents a triple-win opportunity for Africa with three development agendas. With just 12.3 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of the global disease burden, harnessing health and poverty reduction goals to climate-change mitigation and adaptation strategies makes financial and logistical sense.

More than 600 million Africans in sub-Saharan Africa cannot access electricity in their homes from a grid. In order to improve this situation as quickly as possible, the African Development Bank (AfDB) has been working during 2011 on a new energy strategy for Africa with an emphasis on low carbon methods.

While Africa has long battled against the poverty that has scarred much of the continent for decades, the combat against climate change is relatively new. But they are not separate struggles. That was the idea that dominated a debate on climate finance at the climate change conference, or COP 17, in Durban.